


Winter Wonderland

by islandgirl



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Family Fluff, M/M, Snowball Fight, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25554745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islandgirl/pseuds/islandgirl
Summary: Eddie went to bed last night in California and woke up in a damn snow globe.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 119





	Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elisela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/gifts).



> For @hearteyesforbuck who prompted me: Buddie + Don’t you dare throw that snowba-, goddammit!”
> 
> Hope it was worth the wait!

“Dad’s gonna be so mad.”

That’s the first whispered words that Eddie hears as he lumbers down the hall, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. It’s followed by a giggle so he knows, whatever he’s about to walk in to, can’t be that bad.

“Eh. I’m not worried,” Buck’s whisper carries with it a smug note.

And just like that, Eddie takes it right back. If Buck is involved, it might be bad. The ‘going to be cleaning up for hours’ kinda bad

Eddie pauses in the hallway, suddenly afraid of what he might find when he turns the corner. Buck has a way of getting carried away, especially where Chris is concerned. And most of the time, it’s harmless; like Buck dropping thirty dollars in quarters on a crane game so Chris can get a stuffy in the shape of a taco kinda harmless. Occasionally though, Buck goes all out, like when he and Chris constructed a volcano the size of the kitchen island that exploded lava up to the ceiling because Chris wasn’t happy with a little one. Eddie’s kitchen ceiling still has faint red splatter marks on it that won’t come clean. So yeah, he is pretty afraid of what he’s going to walk in to, especially when he hears Chris again.

“I don’t know, Buck,” Christopher says, pure wonder in his voice. “It’s everywhere.”

Eddie sighs in resignation. It’s Christmas Eve morning and he really just wants to spend a nice day with his boys at home before the holiday shuffle starts tonight. They’ve got family dinner with the team tonight, then they are spending the day at his Abuela’s tomorrow with his parents, and then the day after they are back on shift. Today is the only day they have to spend as a family, just the three of them. It was supposed to be nice and relaxing, except now apparently he has to deal with …

Snow.

Eddie turns the corner into the living room and stops abruptly, finding inches of fluffy, white snow on his living room floor. It doesn’t even really look like the living room anymore with all the furniture gone from the room. And there’s a bite to the air that sends chills up the bare skin of his arms. It feels, and looks, like a snowy winter morning. How the hell?

He cuts a glance over to see Buck and Christopher standing just on the edge of the snow, eyes taking in the unblemished blanket of white around them. Chris pokes at it with his hands, a grin on his face. He glances up at Buck and laughs, tossing a handful and watching it flutter back to the ground. Buck looks … pleased.

It hits Eddie like a lightning strike, swift and electrifying, leaving his whole body buzzing. Of course Buck made it snow for Christopher.

Ever since they had dinner with Maddie and Chim a few weeks ago, Chris has been obsessed with snow. Maddie and Buck told him all about their winters growing up in Pennsylvania, about sleigh riding and snowball fights and snow forts, each story make Chris’s eyes glow more and more with excitement. He grew up in Texas, never met a cold winter day in his life, so the tales of a winter full of frosty breath and snow up to their knees was like a fairytale world to the kid.

All Christopher had to do was ask and, of course, Buck made it happen. He turned their living room into a winter wonderland.

“Dad! It snowed!”

Eddie knows he’s a step behind, barely manages to catch Chris as he crashes into his legs in excitement. His brain is still stuck on … there’s snow in my living room. He went to bed last night in California and woke up in a damn snow globe.

“I see, buddy.”

“Bucky made it snow.” Chris states it proudly, making a blush creep up Buck’s neck.

“I can see that,” Eddie flicks his eyes between his excited son and a blushing Buck. “How did Buck manage this miracle, I wonder.”

“I’ll never give away my secrets.”

Buck looks smug once again, but Eddie distinctly remembers a few nights of incessant Googling and finding a few receipts from a dollar store for a curious amount of conditioner. Fine, he’ll let Buck keep his secrets … for now.

“Now we don’t have enough for all the fun things like sleigh riding. But we can make a snowman or have a snowball fight or make snow angels.”

As Buck lists off all the things they can do in their indoor snow palace, Christopher’s smile growers wider. He’s practically vibrating in anticipation.

“Now, before you can go play in the snow, you need a few things.” Buck hands each of them a gift bag, a smile on his face.

Christopher tears into his bag excitedly, Eddie just peeks inside. He pulls out a simple green knit hat and gloves. He quirks an eyebrow at Buck, but keeps going as he pull out something larger. A sweater, he realizes, gently unrolling it to reveal … a hideous and gaudy red and green monstrosity of a sweater with a dinosaur on the front wearing a winter hat and snow boots. It’s the ugliest thing he thinks he’s ever seen, but when he looks up to find a matching one on Buck and the same one in Christopher’s hands … well he can deal with it.

And now that he thinks about it, a sweater might not be a bad idea. Thechill in the air is causing him to shiver lightly. He tugs it on, watching as Chris does the same.

“We match!” Chris all but shouts, hands clapping as grins at his dads.

“Why dinosaurs though?” Eddie asks, tugging on his knit hat and gloves. He’s not surprised to find that Chris and Buck both have hats and gloves that match his own as well. They’re a matched set, the three of them.

“The question is, why not dinosaurs?” Buck gives him a smirk as he gives Chris’s hat a little tug, pulling the brim back enough so it’s not resting over his eyes. “All right kid, you ready?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go!”

Two steps and they are in the snow and after a few minutes, the house around them seems to disappear. They aren’t trapped in a house in LA on a warm December morning. No, they are frolicking out in the snowy fields on a chilly winter morning in nowhere Pennsylvania, just like Buck described it.

Buck helps Chris lay down in the middle of the room and shows him the art of making the perfect snow angel. He’s spread out like a starfish, arms and legs swinging back and forth in the snow. When he sits up, snow clings to the curls poking out from beneath his hat. Buck helps him stand and step carefully away from shape left behind. The room rings with Christopher’s delighted laughter before he drops back down to the ground and does it again. And again. And again. He talks Buck and Eddie into making one with him so they have a copy of their family carved into the snow. Buck makes them pose for an awkward selfie with their angels in the background before Chris fluffs up the snow again.

They build a snowman taller than Chris. Buck, unsurprisingly, is prepared and pulls out a snowman kit with all the necessary accoutrements. Their snowman sits tall and skinny in the center of the room, a stubby carrot for a nose and a green scarf wrapped around it’s neck. Chris giggles as he places buttons on as eyes and a wide smile. Eddie feels his heart swell watching Buck hoist Christopher up to settle the hat on the snowman’s head.

“This is amazing,” Eddie murmurs softly to Buck as they sit together, tucked up against the wall watching Chris play. Buck’s even had the foresight to brew coffee for them, hot chocolate for Chris, and have it at the ready in a thermos. Part of the experience is what Buck had said in answer to Eddie’s disbelieving look; thoughtful is what Eddie knows it is, and that Buck knows his boys too well.

“Well he’s an amazing kid,” Buck answers right back. There’s a fond smile on his face as he watches Chris toss up another handful of snow and laugh.

Eddie hums in agreement, taking a sip of his coffee. He slides his arm around Buck’s waist and pulls him a little closer. It never ceases to amaze him to see the depths of Buck’s love. It’s clear, just from look at the shadows under his eyes, that Buck has spent the greater part of the early morning hours setting all of this up, if not most of the night. Moving furniture out of the house, setting up tarps to protect the floor, turning down the thermostat so the house keeps a chill, making enough snow so that the place is covered in inches of the stuff … Eddie feels a little breathless thinking of all the work Buck put in just to give Chris a Christmas surprise. God he loves this man.

But it’s not just this one Christmas, Eddie realizes. Buck has made every Christmas of theirs special. Since the very beginning, Buck has been there, making their day over and over and over again. He helped Eddie out that first Christmas, taking Chris to see Santa, helped him work through some of the thoughts plaguing him about Shannon and letting her back into their lives. And last year, spending time with Chris making gingerbread houses and planning the best surprise Christmas dinner at the firehouse so everyone could be together, so Chris could be with Eddie …

And now this.

“You are amazing,” Eddie tells him, giving him a squeeze to accentuate his sentiment. “I love you, Ev.”

Buck ducks his head, flush stealing over his face. He swallows the last sip of coffee and replaces the cap on the thermos. He doesn’t respond, but the way he looks up at Eddie is all the reply he needs to know that Buck loves him too.

“Ready to learn how to make the perfect snowball, buddy?” Buck says to Chris instead, to which Chris just cheers excitedly.

That should’ve been Eddie’s clue that he was about to be in trouble. He’s still too stuck on the wonderment of the morning and enjoying the sight of Buck and Christopher playing together. He doesn’t realize that they’ve already started creating an arsenal until it’s too late. His son lets out a too loud, too suspicious giggle and when he looks over, Eddie’s met with the sight of Buck kneeling near the snowman with a snowball in hand.

“Don’t you dare throw that snowba-”

Buck lets the snowball fly.

Bullseye. It smacks Eddie right in the forehead with a soft thud, disintegrating into a cloud immediately on impact, no harm done.

“Goddammit.”

Eddie scrambles up from his vulnerable position against the wall, but he’s not nearly fast enough. They have a pile of snowballs prepared and are unleashing them on him relentlessly. Snowball after snowball lands on or around him like tiny grenades, sending up plumes of snow around him. Chris’s peals of laughter echo throughout the whole house as he throws each one with reckless abandon.

With no time to get his own snowballs ready for a defensive strike, Eddie opts for grabbing handfuls of snow and throwing them in Buck’s direction. It’s not as effective as he wants because his range is limited and Buck keeps dodging him, but it gets him away from the pile long enough for Eddie to get his hands on a few. There’s no cover to dive for, it’s just open space so there is no where for Buck to hide when Eddie gets his hands on a snowball. He lets them loose, a barrage of snow bullets raining down on Buck’s back as he dive’s face first into the snow by the sliding door.

With Buck neutralized for the moment, Eddie makes his move for Chris, who’s sitting on the ground next to the snowman, laughing hysterically. Eddie crawls through the snow until he gets to Chris and slings an arm around his waist. The moment Eddie has him, Chris dumps two handfuls of snow right on top of him, wiggling like a worm as he tries to squirm out of Eddie’s grip. His cheeks are flushed as he laughs, already reaching for more snow.

“Oh no ya don’t,” he chuckles, running his fingers up and down Chris’s sides, tickling him.

When Chris relinquishes the snow, Eddie whoops in triumph. He tosses another snowball in Buck’s direction to keep him back, but realizes he is quickly running out of ammo. Buck and Chris were not shy about how much they unleashed on him in their initial assault. He’s going to have to make more and that requires two hands.

“Piggyback?” Eddie asks Chris, who nods enthusiastically.

Problem solved. Eddie hoists Chris up on to his back, Chris’s arms wrapping around his neck in an effort to hold on as Eddie starts crawling around the snow once again. With Chris perched on his back, Buck’s attempts at retaliation slow considerably. Win-win.

“I’m gonna save you, buddy,” Buck cries out dramatically as he slings a snowball towards Eddie’s stomach, the only part he can hit safely without hitting Chris.

“I’d like to see you try,” Eddie taunts, smirk plastered on his face as he presses Chris tighter against his back with an arm.

“Save me, Bucky!” Chris giggles as he hangs on his dad’s back.

And Buck tries. He tries to avenge Chris’s capture, but it quickly becomes evident that his effort is futile. He’s got two snowballs left and only a small window of opportunity to strike. Instead of letting the snow missiles fly and hope for accuracy, Buck goes for an all out assault instead. He fakes Eddie out, miming a throw so that Eddie ducks, then he scrambles across the floor as fast as he can. Except Eddie is fast too. He looks up and catches Buck midway.

Buck tries to stop, sliding on his knees and rearing back. Eddie is pressing forward though, a wide predator’s grin on his face as he advances. It takes nothing when they meet for Eddie to tip Buck on to his back in a slow, controlled tackle. With Buck sprawled out in the snow below him, Eddie leans down over Buck, knees on either side of his hips, hands pinning his wrists in place so Buck can’t use the snowballs still in his grasp.

“Truce,” Buck chuckles, wide smile spread across his face. “I give up. I give up.”

Eddie leans down and presses his lips to Buck’s, a soft sigh escaping.

“Dad,” Chris whines softly, breaking them apart.

Chuckling, Eddie lets Christopher slide off his back, back into the snow before he collapses next toBuck, breathless from the snow battle. Next to him, Buck is still laughing even as he tries to catch his own breath, eyes dancing as he glances over at Eddie.

“Thank you for this,” Eddie tells him. He links their fingers, squeezing. It’s everything he can’t find the words to say right now and hopes that Buck can understand them. He thinks Buck does because his eyes go soft and little watery for a moment as he nods.

On the other side, Christopher pops up from the snow. “New alliance,” he shouts, dropping a handful of snow on top of Buck as he scrambles towards Eddie.

Eddie laughs, pushing himself up from the ground, ready to start the battle once again. With Buck and Chris, he’s ready for anything.

**Author's Note:**

> You can absolutely make your own snow with conditioner and and baking soda. Would I recommend it in this quantity? Absolutely not. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr[@cptmeatball](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/cptmeatball)!


End file.
